[CTC_TRADE] Wisconsin Anti-Outsourcing Bill | We won one, but there is more work to do . . .

[Citizens Trade Campaign]

Obama Solution to Stop Outsourcing - Stop Counting Jobs
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-elk/obama-solution-to-stop-ou_b_484413.h
tml>  Outsourced (No, Seriously!)


 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-elk> Mike Elk

Mike Elk <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-elk> 

Campaign for America's Future

Posted: March 3, 2010 03:06 PM 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-elk/obama-solution-to-stop-ou_b_484413.ht
ml 

The numbers are outrageous, sickening even. How can anyone stand to look at
them?

Since 2000, the U.S. has lost 5.5
<http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_plight_of_american_manufact
uring>  million manufacturing jobs, with 2.1
<http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_plight_of_american_manufact
uring>  million of those jobs being lost in the last two years alone. Since
2001, over
<http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_plight_of_american_manufact
uring>  42,400 factories have closed in the U.S., and another 90,000 are
considered at severe risk of closing. The last time so few were employed in
manufacturing was in 1941, before World War II spending pulled that sector
out of its Great Depression slump. 

Numbers like these make me want to cry. 

So President Obama has come up with a big and bold solution to deal with the
problem. He's going to shut down the federal office that counts how many
jobs are being shipped overseas. 

It's like ignoring a bully that picks on you in grade school. If we just
ignore companies like Whirlpool
<http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010030902/whirlpool-tells-callers-call
-congress-theyre-right>  that take stimulus money and ship jobs
overseas--maybe they will stop doing it. 

That will show those big multinational companies. Hit them where it really
hurts--in their egos. 

Seriously, folks, this is what President Obama is really proposing. From
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/02/AR201003020
3433.html> The Washington Post:

Like a scorekeeper for the world, a tiny unit within the Bureau of Labor
Statistics tracks globalization's winners and losers, and the results are
not always pretty for the United States. Manufacturing jobs here, for
example, have fallen faster since 1979 than in Canada, Germany or Japan.
Compensation for those jobs dropped here in 2008 but jumped in South Korea
and Australia. 

Soon, however, Americans may be spared the demoralization in these numbers:
The White House wants to shutter the unit that produces them. 

President Obama's budget would eliminate the International Labor Comparisons
office and transfer its 16 economists to expand the bureau's work tracking
inflation and occupational trends. 

Remember how as Iraq became a quagmire, President George W. Bush said he
wasn't fazed by the news because he didn't read the newspaper? President
Obama looks as if he is taking a similar approach to job outsourcing. Just
ignore the problem and it will go away. You don't miss what you don't
measure.

It didn't work in our misadventures in Iraq and it certainly won't work in
dealing with how to compete in the global economy. 

High-wage countries like Germany have figured out a way to compete with
China and Mexico. In 2008, Germany ran a
<http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=germanys_economic_engine>
$267-billion trade surplus, while the United States ran a
<http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=germanys_economic_engine>
$568-billion deficit. 

How did that happen? 

Germany actually came up with a comprehensive plan to encourage
manufacturing in Germany. Meanwhile, the United States has proposed to just
stop counting how many jobs we are losing. 

If President Obama really wants to deal with this problem, he would also
develop a national manufacturing strategy. This week a bipartisan group of
senators, including Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Olympia
Snowe (R-Maine), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), and Sherrod
Brown (D-Ohio), wrote to President Obama this week asking
<http://brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press_releases/release/?id=BCAACEBA-D5F0-4
CEE-96ED-1B183EFEC5D4>  him to do just that: 

Indeed, for the last several decades, administrations have passed up
critical opportunities to formulate a rational and comprehensive
manufacturing policy. Continued apathy will undermine our country's ability
to achieve energy independence and place our military readiness at risk.... 

Without an adequate commitment of resources and coordination among every
executive branch department, we are afraid that the tenets of this framework
may not be appropriately fulfilled. We would therefore respectfully request
additional information about how the Administration is putting these
strategies to work, including specific goals, detailed initiatives
supporting those goals, and performance measures to help ensure continuous
progress. 

If President Obama really wants to take a bipartisan approach to creating
jobs, he can do it by creating a national strategy to grow manufacturing
jobs--not by refusing to count the cost of inaction.

 

Follow Mike Elk on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MikeElk
<http://www.twitter.com/MikeElk> 

*	 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/outsourcing/> Outsourcing 
*	Careers <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/careers/>  
*	Barack Obama <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/barack-obama/>  

 

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